With all the current admissions and accusations of doping during the 1990’s and early years of this century, I am slightly saddened that one of my favourite riders, and one of the few universally acknowledged to have ridden clean during those years, has decided to retire. After fifteen years in the pro peleton (all spent with the Cofidis team) David Moncoutié will retire on Sunday at the end of this years Vuelta.
In his early years many pundits thought that he was a potential Tour de France winner and although he won a couple of stages that potential was never fulfilled, largely, in my opinion, because he was a clean rider in the Lance Armstrong/Jan Ulrich era. The latter part of his career in many ways has been more succesful than the early part. He has won the climbers jersey and stages in The Vuelta for the past four years as well as other smaller races. This could be seen as a sign that cycling is actually getting cleaner. I hoped that he could take the Polka-dot jersey in this years Tour de France, but a crash on Stage 12 forced him out of the race.
He says that he has no ambition to stay in cycling, but will carry on riding his bike. That was the thing I liked most about him, he always seemed to enjoy the riding as much if not more than the winning.
I said in my last post that I would take a look at the potential winners of the Maillot Vert (Points) and the Maillot a Pois (King of the Mountains) competitions in this post. In these competitions, especially the King of the Mountains competition, it is a bit harder to pick out the potential winners.
Normally in the Green Jersey competition it is fairly easy to find the riders who could win it. You start the list with Mark Cavendish, then add a few others. This year predicting a winner is complicated by the Olympic Road Race taking place six days after the Tour de France finishes. The Olympic course suits the type of rider who would normally be targeting the Green Jersey, so there is a question mark over whether some or indeed any of the contenders will make it to Paris. Some, like previous Green Jersey winners Thor Hushovd and Tom Boonen, have decided to opt out of the Tour completely, in order to concentrate on the Olympics. Other contenders may be tempted to drop out before the Pyrénées in order to fully rested on the start line in London. All of this makes predicting a winner difficult. In addition, this this years route appears to feature fewer stages that are suited to out and out sprinters.
The short answer is I haven’t got a clue. Alexander Vinokurov has said that he would like to at least try to win the thing. Every French breakaway artist would like to spend a day or two in the jersey. A climber like Dan Martin or Samuel Sanchez, who is unlikely to feature as a G.C. contender could take it, but for sentimental reasons I think it would be nice if David Moncoutie won the Polka Dots in what will be his final Tour de France.
It is time to fire up the blog again. Le Tour de France est presque sur nous mes enfants. Next Saturday on the 30th of June one hundred and ninety-eight riders set off from Liège in Belgium in the hopes that one of them will pull on that final maillot jaune on the Champs-Élysées three weeks later. It is starting a week earlier than it normally would because of some silly multi-sport event that London is staging the following week.
(More London-based whines about the Olympics will follow over the next month or two.)
One hundred and ninety-eight riders start but only one can win, so who is it likely to be? I can tell you who it wont be. It won’t be Andy Schleck, he is out with a fractured pelvis sustained in a fall in the Criterium du Dauphine. It won’t be Alberto Contador, he is banned until August because of doping violations or eating a dodgy steak, depending on whose story you believe. It won’t be Mark Cavendish, he will lose twenty minutes the first time the road tilts seriously upwards and at least another twenty on every subsequent occasion.
Click on the map for full details of the route
This years route goes clockwise round the country, with the Alps coming before the Pyrénées.This is normally reckoned to favour the all-round riders like Cadel Evans against the pure climbers like Frank Schleck. This year’s course also features two long individual time-trials for the first time in a few years. All in all including the prologue there is about 100km of racing against the clock. Again this doesn’t help the climbers. The climbers will have to think about how they are going to win this years tour. I don’t think the will be able to wait to the final climb of the day before they attack, because they won’t gain enough time that way. They will need at least three minutes over the likes of Cadel Evans or Bradley Wiggins going into the final time trial to have a hope of winning. The moyen montange stages could prove to be crucial. The other stage that I think will be important is Stage 16. This the classic Pyrénéan stage from Pau to Bagnères-de-Luchon as won by Robert Millar back in 1983.
The contenders
So who is going to win? For the first time, probably ever, we have a British rider, Bradley Wiggins, with a realistic chance of overall victory. Some bookmakers have him odds-on to win, which is ridiculous. There are far to many variables in a three-week stage for any rider to be odds-on to win it. Wiggins isn’t Frankel, streets ahead of the opposition, he is one of about five or six riders with a realistic chance of winning the race. They are in my opinion, and in no particular order; Cadel Evans (last years winner), Frank Schleck, Bradley Wiggins, Vincenzo Nibali, Robert Gesink and Ryder Hesjedal.
Cadel Evans (BMC) (Aus) has been there done that and last year finally got the tee-shirt. There will be no doubt about who is the BMC team leader and what the teams object is. He is strong, determined, more than a good enough climber to stay with the best in the mountains, and even if he can’t always match the sudden accelerations of the pure climbers, has repeatedly shown the ability to drag himself back up to them and limit his losses. He is also one of the peleton’s better time-trialists, especially at the business end of a three-week tour. This years course probably suits him even better than last years. However last year he was one of the oldest riders ever to win the Tour de France and this year he is one year older. At the Critérium du Dauphiné he did not seem to be at full form, but neither was he at his best last year, besides there is a saying in the peleton “Good Dauphiné, bad Tour, bad Dauphiné, good Tour”, meaning that it is possible to peak too soon.
Bradley Wiggins(Sky) (Gbr) had a good Dauphiné, he won it. He has also won Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie this year. He is undoubtedly the man in form. He is a similar rider to Evans, in that he is a good climber albeit one who generally prefers to climb at a steady pace and he is probably the best time-trialist in the world at the moment. If he is within three minutes of anyone bar Cadel Evans at the start of the final time-trial I will expect him to in Yellow by the end of it. I think that he can even give Evans a minute. In the three races that he has won this year he and his team have made controlling the race look easy. However in the races up to now the team has been wholly dedicated to making sure that Wiggins is on the top step of the podium. In the Tour Mark Cavendish will be looking for stage wins and probably trying to keep the Green (Points) Jersey that he won last year. The riders required to take care of “Cav” and lead him out in the sprints are not the same type of rider that Wiggins needs in the mountains. Possible conflict there.
Frank Schleck (RadioShack-Nissan-Trek) (Lux) is one of the climbers in the race who could win it. Normally he is slightly in his younger brother Andy’s shadow. Andy being out injured perversely could actually help Frank. Last year they had a tendency to try to make sure that one brother’s attack wasn’t putting the other brother into difficulties, so when they did attack in the mountains, they didn’t persist, allowing the other riders to come back to them. This year when he goes, he wont have to worry about his little brother being left. Having said that, he is generally not as strong a climber as is brother and in last years final time trial he lost 2:34 to Cadel Evans over a course that was 11 km shorter than this years. In addition, rumour has it that he (and Andy) are not happy with their current team and the Team Manager (Johan Bruyneel) in particular. So while I think that Frank Schleck might influence who wins I don’t think that it will actually be him who stands on the top step in Paris.
Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) (Ita) is another rider whose main strength is his climbing, but he also rides a reasonable time-trial, if not in the same league as Wiggins and Evans. He has won a Grand Tour before, the 2010 Vuelta d’Espana (Tour of Spain) so he knows how to defend a lead if necessary. Liquigas’ normal tactics in the mountains seem to be set a high but steady pace to make sure that there are no surprise attacks and then for the leader to try to nip off at the end. This plays right in to the hands of the likes of Wiggins and Evans, both of whom are quite happy to sit behind anyone who is setting a steady pace, almost no matter how high. What they find more difficult is a pace that is constantly changing, having to constantly put in an extra effort to drag themselves back up to an attacker. In this years Giro d’Italia those tactics didn’t do the eventual winner any harm.
Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin) (Can) won this years Giro d’Italia in the final time-trial. A similar rider in many ways to Evans and Wiggins, this years course should suit him. He rides for a team that works as a team, and regards a victory for anyone on the team as a victory for the team. He will have some of the most experienced riders in the peleton working for him, but the Tour de France is a step up from the Giro, and we will also need to find out if he has fully recovered from the Giro, something that might not become apparent until the third week.
Robert Gesink (Rabobank) (Ned) is a tall skinny Dutch climber with a reasonable time-trial. He won this years Tour of California with a superb attack on the principle mountain stage, so his form is there. The Tour of California, however doesn’t attract a very strong field because it takes place at the same time as the Giro. A fourth place at the recent Tour de Suisse show that he is still up there. His main problem, however is a tendency to fall off.
My predictions
Because the course suits all-rounders rather than climbers, and because the two climbers (Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador) who are able to disrupt the equilibrium of the all rounders in the mountains are both out of the race, this is how I think the final podium will be. It’s an all Commonwealth affair;
First Bradley Wiggins
Second Cadel Evans
Third Ryder Hesjedal
Of course a rider could appear, if not exactly from nowhere, but from below the radar, and surprise us all. Last year’s White Jersey winner Pierre Rolland is one who springs to mind.
I shall have a look at the Green (points) Jersey and the Polka-dot (King-of-the-Mountains) Jersey competitions in my next post.
If you type “jonathan tiernan locke doping” into Google my blog comes out near the top of the first page. This is because on my Home Page there are two posts that mention Jonathan Tiernan-Locke and one that discusses Jan Ulrich’s recent two-year ban. The Ulrich post talks about doping.
I just want to make it clear that I do not suspect Jonathan Tiernan-Locke of doping.
Last weekend Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, won two stages and the overall at Tour Méditerranéen. There was a suspicion that he was slightly lucky and that the shortened stages (due to snow) had somehow helped him. This weekend was the Tour du Haut Var a two-day stage race held in the hills above Cannes and St-Tropez. The stage lengths are around the 200km mark and some of the bigger boys came out to play as well.
A breakaway dominated Stage 1 from Draguignan – La Croix Valmer (189.2 km). Two of them held on to the finish. Jonathan Tiernan-Locke (JT-L from now on to save typing) jumped clear of the peleton on the finishing climb to finish in third place, six seconds behind, and set himself up for today.
Stage 2 from Fréjus – Fayence (205.4 km) was a bit of a brute. Five cols and a viciously steep final kilometre.
The early part of the race had the inevitable breakaway, but JT-L’s team Endura Racing and the Bretagne-Schuller (who had the race lead) with a bit of help from Garmin-Barracuda and BMC rode tempo until it all came back together at the penultimate climb. JT-L started to attack at this point, not full throttle as it was too far out, but hard enough to thin the peleton out and get a feel for who had the legs. This caused a break to form of about ten riders and that is the point at which the video starts.
Three things stood out on the video, when an attack went from the break he didn’t panic, he just settled in, recovered and made sure that he was ready for the final climb, the second thing was just how fast he comes up the hill, The third was that he was going so quickly he almost overcooked an uphill hairpin bend.
The Haut Var website has a video of most of Stage 2 and a full review of Stage 1. Commentary is (obviously) in French. If you have a couple of hours to waste, watch it. Near the beginning of the video the presenter interviewed the great French cyclist Raymond Poulidor. Even though my French is not that great, I understood enough to know that he thinks that JT-L is the real thing. Stephen Roche is also convinced. See this from his Twitter feed.
I know that Philippe Gilbert is probably saving his uphill sprinting for the Fléche Wallon and Liege-Bastionge-Leige, and similarly with some of the other big names in the field, but it is still a very impressive start to the season. It should also get Endura invites to some bigger races. I for one would like to see what they can do in some of the hillier classics.
Robert Marchand has just broken the World (age-group) Record for the distance cycled in one hour.
The full story can be read here. Yesterday (Feb 17th) he rode 24.251km in the hour on the track at Aigle in Switzerland. He celebrated his 100th birthday on Nov 26 last year.
After completing the ride he said:
“For the last five years I have decided not to go for rides of more than 100km,” he went on, adding with supreme understatement, “There is no point going overboard. I want to keep cycling for some time yet.”
On second thoughts maybe I won’t try breaking the record. I’m not all that sure I could beat it now and am half his age.
The final act of the tragedy that became the farce known as “Jan and Operacion Puerto” , concluded a few days ago. The drama began with Jan Ulrich being thrown off the 2006 Tour de France. It ended with the Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS) giving him a meaningless (he retired in 2007) two-year ban running from August 2011. It also annulled all his results from May 2005 until his retirement. Cancelling his third place in the 2005 tour means that Francesco Mancebo is the rider who moves up a place. Richard Moore has a bit to say about this:
Whatever: it seems a bit rich of the UCI, cycling’s governing body, to have pursued Ullrich with such vengeance when they presided over — and, through their initial inaction, must take some responsibility for — an era so blighted by EPO. Why go after Ullrich and ignore others?
It is a farce that is confirmed by a study of the updated results of the 2005 Tour. With Ullrich’s third-place finish now airbrushed from history, Francisco Mancebo steps up to the podium. That’s the same Mancebo who, like Ullrich, was forced out of the 2006 Tour when his name was linked to Operacion Puerto. In fact, of the revised top ten, eight riders have either tested positive, served a ban or been under investigation for doping.
This leads to one conclusion. The problem was not Jan Ullrich.
It is not clear how far Ullrich’s confessions as to the use of performance enhancing substances went but he has admitted to being involved with Dr Eufemiano Fuentes who ran the Madrid clinic associated with the Operacion Puerto blood doping investigation. He has described his actions as “being a mistake”. Every athlete caught doping describes their actions as being a “mistake”, usually they mean the mistake was in being caught, but he went on to apologise:
“I would like to sincerely apologise for this behaviour – I’m very sorry.”
“In retrospect I would act differently in some situations during my career.”
I have no idea if Jan Ullrich doped throughout his career. His introduction to cycling was through the old East German sports system, so it is quite possible. Having said that, he was not the only cyclist of that era to use performance enhancers. Jonathan Vaughters, now Garmin-Barracuda’s general manager, raced during the same period as Ullrich. He responded to the news with a series of tweets:
Ullrich was a classy rider and probably should have won more than he did, but he ran into Lance Armstrong, who might have been the better rider. Armstrong was certainly much more focused. If Armstrong had worn Adidas kit, as Ulrich did for much of his career, there would never have been any jokes about how far apart the stripes were in the early season races. Armstrong also probably had better support than Ullrich.
His only Tour de France Victory came in 1997, and it is from that tour that I take my abiding memory of Jan Ullrich the rider. His first day in the Yellow Jersey came on Stage 10 from Luchon to Andorra Arcalis. Bjarne Riis, the previous year’s winner, was the leader of the Telekom team, but was not going particularly well. Ullrich dropped back to the team car to ask if he could attack, permission was given, so he did, dropping every one, including climbers Richard Virenque and Marco Pantani. At one point (about 15:30) on the video you will see him looking around to admire the scenery, like a tourist out on a day ride. (He was probably looking across a bend to see how much distance he had put into Virenque and Pantani). That is my memory of him as a rider, just how easy he made it look that day.
I think I am correct in saying that the first eight riders to finish this stage have either been convicted of or admitted to doping. As Richard Moore said the problem was not Jan Ullrich.
Update 30/10/2012
As everyone now knows Armstrong was definitely ‘better prepared’ than Ulrich.
The new cycling season is barely a week old and British cyclists have so far recorded five wins, and only two of them from Mark Cavendish. Let’s list them:
We have come to expect Mark Cavendish to win most of the sprints that he contests,as he tweeted @MarkCavendish:
Well, that’s 2 wins from 2 contested sprints with @TeamSky. The lads were incredible at keeping me at the front of a hectic peloton. Thanks
Andy Fenn has just moved up to the ProTour level, joining Omega-Pharma Quickstep in the close season, and the Challenge Majorca races were I think his first ever races at this level, so it is a pretty good way to start. Jonathan Tiernan-Locke is still riding for a Pro-Continetal squad (Endura Racing), but he showed what he could do at last year’s Tour of Britain, when he won the King of the Mountains competition. His win came from a bold attack about two kilometres from the finish and managed to hold off the sprinters to hang on (just) for the win. In addition Adam Blythe (BMC) has been going well at the Tour of Qatar, picking up minor places.
So far it is looking good.
Update 12/02/2012 @ 17:30
Looking even better.
Jonathan Tiernan-Locke has won the final stage and the overall at the Tour Méditerranéen.
Below is a video of his 1st stage victory.
Video of J T-L’s stage four victory. The stage had to be shortened because Mont Faron was closed due to snow. I don’t know if that helped him or not, but you can only win the race that you are competing in.
I know that the Tour Méditerranéen isn’t the biggest race in the world, but it is a significant step up from the Premier Calendar. This could be the beginning of something big. Don’t forget his team Endura Racing are British and have won more stage races this year than Sky.
This is the last Sunday in January, and I know that, in London at least, the temperature will probably drop below zero for the first time since about this time last year. The signs that spring is on the way are unmistakable though.
The Belgian sorry, World Cyclo-cross Championships have just taken place. In the cycling world this means that winter is almost past.
More to the point though, to-day was also the day that Le Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise (L’Ouverture) took place. (The report and results link is in French.) For me, this marks the start of the cycling season and therefore the beginning of Spring.
Soon it will be Paris-Nice, Milan-San Remo, De Ronde Van Vlaanderen, Le Tour de France, all leading up to the Olympic Road Race in my back yard, on the roads that I ride week in, week out. Can’t wait.
Note: The domination by the Belgians (that’s a phrase that isn’t used too often) who took the first seven places, was only in the men’s championships. The women shared the honours around a bit more evenly, but even then, first and second were Dutch.
Further update 30/12/2011 16:30
GP d’Ouverture La Marseillaise 2012 – Highlights from France3
I found this video on the Garmin Cycle Team’s website. I like the team’s ethos, especially the strong anti-doping stance. I like the way that are a team and not a bunch of riders who happen to wear the same jersey. I am also a great admirer of Jonathan Vaughters’ side burns.
Admittedly it is a bit of a puff piece, but I think it is worth watching.
A Scotsman in Suburbia 